"I worked so hard for that first kiss
And a heart don't forget something like that
Like an old photograph
Time can make a feeling fade
But the memory of a first love
Never fades away."
Tim McGraw
'Hello, grandpa.' Kathy said as she climbed up the steps to the porch with her bags in her hands, where her grandfather sat in a rocking chair. The sunset light cast an orange-yellow shine on his hair and if it hadn't been for the numerous wrinkles in his face, one could have thought that Robert Drake was thirty again.
His kind blue eyes lit up with a smile as he saw her. She leaned down to kiss him on the cheek.
'Kathy, I'm glad you're here. Why don't you bring your baggage into your room and join me for dinner?'
'Of course, grandpa.' She smiled back, a warmth flooding through her. She felt like she was coming home. Home was here where she had lived so often and so long. This was a place of with she had only good memories unlike her parents house where she was too often scolded because of her job and her personal life.
Her grandfather had never said a single word about her dancing or her on and off relationship with Maura. In fact as a painter he understood her job better than anyone else in her family, except for her aunt Idina, who was a dancer herself but who also sung and had received many positive critics for her musical performances, while Kathy had a singing voice that had made her mother say once 'could you sing outside so the neighbours see that I don't hit you?'.
The third step on the stair made a familiar noise when she stepped on it and she smiled again. The house was ancient by any standards and far too huge for one person, but then again when her grandfather had bought it, there had been seven persons to live in it.
Her room had originally been her mothers childhood room, but her mother rarely came for a visit, actually Kathy couldn't remember a single time her mother had stayed here with her instead of just dropping her at the porch at the beginning of the vacations.
The room's window didn't look out to the sea, but to the garden, which was now growing wildly since her grandfather wasn't the gardening type. The garden had been her grandmother's responsibility, who had often been helped by Kathy's mother and Karl (she never had called him uncle, it just didn't seem suitable). Most of the times Kathy had problems with imagining her mother elbow-deep in soil, cursing at the weeds and with earth crumbs in her hair and on her face, but there were photos to prove that and Kathy liked looking at them, seeing her mother from a different angle.
Above the bed hung a small painting of a tree and some kind of unidentifiable animal, the first picture her mother ever painted.
She dropped her bags in the gap between the wardrobe and the wall without unpacking them since they contained only her dance clothes. She had enough casual clothes here not to bother and pack some and Lynn, the housekeeper, always made sure that enough lavender was between her clothes so that they would stay moth-free until she came back.
Kathy lay down on the bed and inhaled deeply.
The air that came through the open window was warm and tasted salty but underneath Kathy could feel the oncoming coldness of winter, mingled with the smell of rotting leaves and the lavender from her wardrobe. Another three weeks maybe before autumn would end. She shivered involuntarily. She hated it when autumn ended, it was her favourite season, summer and winter, mingling together, creating something new and beautiful.
Kathy shook her head at herself. She tended to become poetic when she came here, but right now her stomach reminded her that she had promised to join her grandfather for dinner, so she cleaned herself up and changed into an old shirt and a pair of torn jeans that her father had always hated and went downstairs.
Her grandfather wasn't on the porch anymore but in his atelier in front of his recent painting: the background was completely black and in the middle flames enveloped a male naked upper body which was turned sideways. She knew this body, having seen it numerous times years ago when he had painted his 'shadows on a man's back' series. The face, however, wasn't hidden in the shadows like then, it simply wasn't painted yet.
'Who is he?' She wanted to ask but she had asked that so many times and never gotten any kind of answer, so she stayed in the doorway and just watched him paint, his hand fast and sure in its movements.
Her grandfather sighed and shook his head.
'It's no use.' He murmured: 'I just can't remember anymore.'
'His face?' Kathy asked. Her curiousness had always gotten the better of her. Her grandfather turned around to her.
'Yes, his face. I should have done this years ago when it hadn't been too late.'
'Who was he?'
'Someone special.'
'You're always saying that, but who was he else? A friend, a lover, an enemy, a stranger, what?'
'I have a bargain for you: I have a photo of him, somewhere in the attic. Find it for me so I can finish my painting and in return I'll tell you everything you want to know.'
'How do I know that I have the right photo?'
'He presses a lighter to his lips, a shark face is painted on it.'
'You remember such details but not his face?' Kathy asked slightly amused.
'I remember him but it's not enough.' He held out his hand and Kathy took it.
'Deal.' She said.
The attic wasn't as high as the other rooms in the house but it had the extent of the whole house and was stuffed from the floor to the ceiling. Kathy just hoped that the particular photo was in one of the boxes together with the other photos or else she might never find it. In order to begin somewhere she took the first box, none of them were labelled so she didn't knew what she would find in it, and carried it into her room where she emptied it on her bed.
Photos of her mother, her aunts and uncles now were lying all over the coverlet. She had already seen some of them like the one where her mother and Karl proudly presented the first fruit on their tiny cherry tree or the one where aunt Rosemund had been four and used her sisters make up on herself. Kathy giggled when she saw that photo because Rosemund (who was only six years older than Kathy), her cousin Amira and she had done the same thing when Kathy had been three, with similar disastrous results.
There was a family photo, dated shortly before Kathy was born: her grandfather, twenty years younger but already with white streaks in his blonde hair. Her mother with her huge belly and for once her brilliant red hair flooded freely over her shoulder, her husbands hand on her shoulder, playing with a strand and she smiled beautifully in the camera. With her red hair she stood out in the group, even more than Rosemund with her blonde hair because grandfather had blonde hair but no one else had red hair. Her uncle Karl, his dark eyes fixed on his young wife and his newly born daughter instead of the camera. They had met in Lahore where Karl had absolved an internship with an IT company. They had married head over heels and Karl still claimed that she had cast an eternal love spell on him.
Next to them stood Idina, grinning her trademark grin and making ears over Jack's head, which was probably the reason for little Rosemund's happy grin and grandmother's scolding face towards her second daughter.
There where other photos of Kathy's mother and her aunts and uncles, photos from their childhood: Jack yelling up to Idina and Rosemund who shared a bowl of cookies in a tree house, her mother on her first school day, Jack and his girlfriend, Christmas, Eastern, summer vacations on the beach and winter vacations in the mountains, but no photo of a man with a shark lighter.
'Please, Rob, don't you think that this is a bit too childish?' Cora asked exasperatedly. She never called him Bobby, just Rob (or if she was really mad she called him Robert among other things, which their five-year-old daughter was just too happy to pick up and spread in kindergarten).
'It's a surprise.' Nicole explained from the backseat. And really, Bobby thought, it probably just bugged Cora that Nicole knew but she didn't.
'I know.' Cora answered: 'but I feel stupid with this blindfold.'
'We're nearly there.' Bobby assured her and Nicole added:
'You'll like it.'
Cora turned in her seat towards her daughter and asked:
'Come on darling, give me a clue, yes?' Nicole jus giggled and shook her head:
'Won't be a surprise them.'
'Right, right.' Cora muttered and Bobby sympathetically rubbed her arm.
'Don't think that your pity will get you anything.' She mock-pouted and Bobby knew that she glared at him from underneath the blindfold. He laughed.
'You're too impatient, how can you be a role model for our daughter when you're snapping at me at every opportunity?'
'You can be the role model and I'll teach her the important things.'
'Like?'
'Like stealing cookies when no one's looking and sharing them with me.' Cora and Nicole laughed. Bobby looked at his daughter in the rear-view-mirror and asked:
'You do that?' But Cora put her finger on her lips and made 'Shh', so Nicole just grinned broadly at her father.
'We're there.' Bobby finally announced and stopped the car. Cora sighed relieved and climbed awkwardly out of the car while Bobby helped Nicole.
'Can I take it off?'
'You can.' Bobby smiled as he saw his wife's face change from irritated to shocked and finally to joy. They stood in front of a white house with green shutters and a huge porch that faced the sea.
'Rob, that's…' she breathed and stared at the house. Nicole tugged at her mother's hand.
'Can I show you the garden, mummy?' She asked: 'It's big!'
Cora and Bobby followed their daughter around the house.
'How did you find it?'
'Do you remember when Nicole and I visited the Mansion for a weekend and you had to work? Well, we decided to try a different route home and practically stumbled onto this.' He made a pause.
'Do you like it?'
She turned her head to look at him fully and answered:
'It's beautiful.'
On the second day, Kathy went right upstairs to the attic after breakfast. This time she chose a smaller box, which also was a lot dustier than the last one.
Down in her room, Kathy discovered that it contained pictures from her grandfather's time as an X-Men. He had been younger then, on some photos he had to be younger than she was today. Sometimes he looked stern, like the leader he had been, walking between destroyed cars and buildings. Kathy wondered why someone would take pictures in such a situation but then she remembered what Karl had told her about the danger room, maybe they had been taken there.
On other photos he was with his team colleges, not in their suits but eating ice cream in the Mansion garden or during a flight in the jet. Kathy knew some of them as aunt and uncles, too, like uncle Piotr, or Angel who was the godfather of her cousin Amira, Aunt Storm who had once made it possible that the children had made a snowman in the middle of the summer, and, of course, numerous photos of Aunt Marie with whom her grandfather had once been involved and on whom Kathy had had a crush when she had been five or six years old.
But there were pictures of other people, too: a beautiful dark haired girl with big earrings, a boy sticking out his blue, forked tongue, a girl with red hair and freckles, holding hands with Jamie Madrox (Kathy had once made a presentation about him in school) and of course the Professor.
All these photos were dated after the Alcatraz Incident and that didn't surprise Kathy. Her grandfather rarely talked about his time as an X-Men at all and he had never talked about anything that had happened before Alcatraz.
She looked at the photos of her grandfather and aunt Marie again. On most of them they seemed to be happy, but on some it was as if ghosts were looming over their shoulders and taking all happiness from them.
Kathy shook her head. She really should spend less time with her Harry Potter audio books. She packed the photos in again, carried the box up to the attic and then took a long walk along the shore.
They were all skittish and Bobby especially since it was his first mission as team leader because Ororo lay in her bed with the flu. The only one who was even more nervous seemed to be Maddy, mainly because it was her first mission ever.
Theresa, as usual, tried mostly unsuccessfully to lighten the mood.
'Don't worry.' She told Maddy: 'It is really very simple: Brennan takes out the security system, Kitty brings us in, we free the mutants and take them out with us on the same way we came in. Nothing can go wrong '
'Don't listen to her.' Jamie leaned over the aisle to speak to Maddy in a conspirative tone.
'No one of us has ever done something as difficult as this mission.' Maddy paled visibly and Jamie grinned, which earned him a hit on the arm from Theresa and a groused
'Madrox!' from Bobby.
'Sorry.' He grinned unruefully and leaned back into his seat.
'Hey Bobby, when do we get to meet your girlfriend?' Jubilee asked from the co-pilot seat to distract the group from unsettling Maddy further.
'You have a girlfriend?' Jamie asked immediately.
'Where have you been Madrox?' Jubilee showed them only the back of her head but they all knew she had just rolled her eyes.
'That's six weeks old news.'
'Is she pretty?'
'Why do you care?' Bobby asked: 'You already have a girlfriend.'
'Might want another one.' Theresa's eyes narrowed on him and Jamie hurried to lift his hands in a apologizing gesture.
'So, is she?'
On the photo Bobby has she is.' Kitty smiled bashfully but continued nonetheless: 'Like snow-white: long black hair, white skin, red lips though I think that this is lipstick.' Jamie whistled appreciatively which earned him another glare from Theresa.
'What's her name?'
'Cora Flanigan. She's in my course.'
'Of course.' Bobby was sure that Jamie was about to make a lewd comment when Rogue's calm voice interrupted them:
'Arrival in 5 minutes.'
The next morning was rainy and when Kathy came down for breakfast, Lynn informed her that her grandfather hadn't left his room yet and since it was already half past nine, it was concerning.
So instead of going right to the attic, she took the breakfast tray Lynn had prepared for her grandfather and took it upstairs together with her own breakfast.
She entered the room after she had knocked and hadn't received an answer. Her grandfather laid in his bed, still sleeping, a sketchbook and numerous pencils around him on the blanket. He woke up when she closed the door and sat up.
'Good morning Kathy.'
'Morning, grandpa.' She put the tray on the nightstand.
'Lynn was worried because you slept so long.'
'What would I do without her?'
'Probably eat oat flakes every morning instead of this.' She smiled and gave her grandfather a plate with freshly baked croissants.
'I didn't found the photo, yet.' She said:
'What's so important about this man?' But her grandfather shook his head, smiling, and Kathy sighed.
'I know, I know, you'll tell me when I found the photo.' She threw her hands up in surrender.
'Did you fight with Maura again?' He asked her gently.
'Yes.' She admitted to her hands: 'I've got an offer for a musical. It's the leading dance role, the payment's perfect and they cast a lot of people I worked with before. The only problem is that it is an arrangement in Germany and I would be gone 18 months.'
'Did you accept?'
'No, I…Damn, Maura knew what she was going to have when she asked me to move in. I love her, I really do and it's not like I'm not trying but she's not the only one who wants a successful career and that means I have to work somewhere else but New York at some point and I already turned down the offer to work in India and…' She took a deep breath to calm down.
'I have no idea what I should do.' Kathy confessed: 'I don't want to lose Maura, but I also want to take up that offer.'
'Have you talked to her?'
'I've tried, she tried, we always ended up yelling at each other.'
'Didn't Maura talk about a sabbatical year?'
'Maura is a closet workaholic, but yes, that could be a possibility. Thanks, grandpa, I'll call her in the afternoon.'
'Do that. I see you at dinner.'
The fourth box contained envelopes full of pictures of her and her cousins. Many photos had been taken on numerous family get-togethers and made Kathy nostalgic with childhood memories. The other photos were taken at home and send to her grandfather from Nicole, Karl and Jack. Only Idina and Rosemund hadn't any children. Idina because she didn't wanted and Rosemund because she was only three years older than Kathy and first wanted to enjoy her career. Kathy doubted that she would find the mysterious photo in one of these envelopes but she still stretched out on her bed and opened one after the other and indulged in her childhood memories.
'Shh, Kathy, Danny.' Rosemund whispered from above the tree. Kathy and Danny were still exhausted from an intensive round of hide and seek and hoped to get some ice-cream from Lynn before dinner.
Rosemund jumped down from the branch she had been sitting on and grinned mischievously.
'Mr. Cherry just left.'
Mr. Cherry's name was of course not Mr. Cherry but Rosemund had nicknamed him such because of the four cherry trees in his garden that bore the most delicious cherries in the whole area – which he never shared with anyone.
'Are you sure?' Kathy asked and her mouth already watered with the thought of juicy and sweet cherries.
'Of course.' Rosemund glared at the idea that she might have been wrong. She was the oldest, after all.
'He took his car.'
'I wanna come with you.' Danny protested as his cousin and aunt made their way towards the fence.
'You can't.' Rosemund told him outright.
'You're too small.'
'But I wanna!'
'Look, Danny, we'll bring you some cherries, okay?' Kathy amended.
'No, I wanna come with you!' Danny stamped his little foot on the ground and pouted. He looked like a miniature of uncle Jack, Kathy thought.
'You can't.' Rosemund stressed and rolled her eyes at Kathy.
'But I want! Or I'll tell grandpa what you're doing!' He added triumphantly.
'You won't.' Rosemund and Kathy both glared at him.
'I will!'
'Then we'll tell him that you ate the rest of the pie.' Rosemund replied.
'But I didn't!' Danny protested.
'But I'm his daughter and I'm prettier and he likes me more than you, so he'll believe me more than you!' Rosemund threatened and Kathy hid her grin over Danny's misery behind her hands. Danny retreated immediately.
'But you'll bring me cherries!' He looked at Kathy
'Yes, we will.' Kathy sighed.
'Promise me!'
'I promise you.' She patted his head: 'Okay?'
'Okay.'
'This is the answering machine of Maura Davies and Kaitlin Tyler. We're not at home so please leave a message after the signal.'
'Hey, Maura, it's me Kathy. I'm here at my grandpa's house and I just wanted to call to let you know I'll be back in a week or so. And…I'm sorry for what happened, I really am. I have an idea how we could solve this problem, so I'll call you again….and I love you.'
The next morning, Kathy was woken by Lynn, who told her sternly that half past six was not an adequate time for a call. Bleary eyed and still half asleep, Kathy staggered down the stair to the telephone in the hall. She took the reviver and mumbled a barely audible hello.
'You've got a lot of damn nerve to just call!' Came Maura's voice loud and angry from the other end. Kathy was promptly awake.
'I should have just deleted your message after what you did but you said you knew an answer, so?'
'I love you.'
'Kathy!' Came the warning reply: 'I haven't yet forgiven you.'
'Sorry.' Kathy smiled: 'I'm just happy you've called. And yes, my grandpa gave me an advice.' She made another pause.
'So?'
'I really want to take that offer and I think you should come with me.'
'What?!'
'You always talked about a year out and this way we wouldn't be separated so long. It would be only six months, or maybe two times three months.'
'Your grandfather said this?'
'Yes.'
'Well, I always said that he's a smart man.' It still sounded aggressive but not as angry as before.
'So, you'll think about it?'
'Yes, yes I will.'
'Thank you.'
'Why are you thanking me? I haven't said yes yet.' Maura threatened and hang up.
With a huge grin plastered on her face, Kathy made her way back up to her room and fell into her soft and still warm bed.
Kathy whistled when she walked upstairs and took the last box of photographs. This box had gathered even more dust than the one with the pictures of her grandfather's former team mates. The box was made of metal and red and looked like one of these cookie boxes that her aunt Sarah bought regularly. Instead of going back to her room, Kathy decided to use the morning light that fell through the attic window on an old chair that stood probably there since the house was build.
A cloud of dust rose to the air when Kathy said down, the box on her lap. It was cool and smooth under her palms and Kathy heart beat faster when she thought that today she would finally hear the story of the mysterious man.
Even though she only knew her as an old woman as old as her grandfather, she recognised her immediately. Most of the photos were professional shots and showed aunt Marie in the most beautiful way that was humanly possible. Kathy remembered that aunt Marie had once told her abut her brief time as a model, but until now, Kathy had never seen a single picture of that period in aunt Marie's life.
Some photos however were different, pictures that were taken with a normal camera. Maybe even by Kathy's grandfather.
Marie woke suddenly like always since she had left her parent's house. She had fallen asleep on the couch in Bobby's room after a particular exhausting training with Ororo and Piotr in the danger room. It had been mid-afternoon when she came here, but now the sun was setting and a blanket lay over her. Bobby sat with his back to her in front of his computer and typed. When she flipped around onto her stomach, the blanket rustled and he turned around.
'Hey.' He smiled at her softly and she could see the warm glow of affection in his eyes. It warmed her, too, far more than the blanket.
'Hey.' She replied and smiled back at him.
'Slept well? You looked pretty exhausted when you came here.'
'You ever try to control your power and another one's, then we'll talk about exhaustion.' She grumbled but grinned back as Bobby grinned.
'What time is it?' she asked. From her position on the couch she couldn't see the clock on Bobby's nightstand and she felt to lazy to turn around.
'Half past seven' Marie buried her head between her arms and groaned as she heard that.
'Something's wrong?' Bobby asked half smirking, half confused.
'I promised Resa to meet her half an hour ago.' Came the muffled reply from the couch. Slowly Marie stretched her limps and yawned.
'I better go, before she yells at me.'
'Okay.' Booby said as he watched her: 'See you later?'
'Of course.' Marie trailed a gloved hand over his cheek and down to his shoulder and then left with a last smile from the doorway.
Frustrated, Kathy closed the box. No photo of any man, less a man with a lighter. Her grandfather had probably thrown away the photo years ago and simply didn't remember that he did.
The metal box slipped out under her fingers and fell from her lap to the ground. Sighing, Kathy knelt down to grab the box as her eyes found a cardboard box that sat underneath the windowsill on the ground in the eternal shadow and was covered in a thick layer of dust. She out the metal box on the chair and carefully blew the dust from the top of the cardboard box. There was an advertisement for orange water ice printed on the top in bright colours.
From the dust Kathy could tell that this box hadn't been opened or moved from it's place since her grandfather had bought the house. Maybe it was just a piece of junk someone had left here but Kathy still opened it. Inside lay a small pile of different things: cinema tickets, all of them at least sixty years old, two plastic lighters, a notebook with some tribal motive on the cover, a pen with the same motive on it and a worn, yellowed paperback copy of 'Casino Royale' by Ian Fleming.
Kathy took the notebook carefully out of the box and opened it. The pages were also slightly yellowed and stiff with old age. They crackled when Kathy flipped them. The lines were full of a small, artful handwriting that had nothing in common with her grandfather's broad scrawl. When she opened the notebook further, something fell out of it. Kathy's heart pounded against her ribcage as she picked the two, three photos up from the ground. The first one showed her grandfather as a boy, barely older than fourteen or fifteen with another boy and they both had their heads tilted and grinned to the camera.
The second one showed the boy alone, while he leaned against a large rock and had his hand raised in a melodramatic gesture that fit his mock-dramatic expression.
The third photo was the photo her grandfather had asked her to find. The boy had a lighter, which had a shark face painted on it, pressed to his lips and stared into the distance. He looked beautiful.
Hastily, Kathy put the metal box with aunt Marie's photos back where it belonged and put the things from the water ice box back in it, except for the photo and carried it downstairs. Her grandfather sat on the porch in a rocking chair. The midmorning light was bright and harsh and when Kathy stepped on the porch she could see how old her grandfather really was and reminded her that he had been alive during events that she had learned in a history class.
'Grandpa?' He turned his head towards her and Kathy held up the cardboard box and the photo.
'I've found it. The photo you wanted for your picture.' She gave him the photo and then settled on the floor at his feet as she had done as a kid whenever he had told a story.
Her grandfather affectionately caressed the photo, then put it in his lap.
'Was he your friend?' Kathy asked.
'First he was and then he became more and in the end we became enemies. Sixty years ago the world was different from the world you know. Mutants were a fairly new phenomena and homosexuality was widely frowned upon. Professor Xavier brought me to the mansion when I was 14 and there I met John. To be true I didn't like him very much in the beginning. He was the most terrible roommate you can imagine but he grew on you and before I knew what was happening he was my best friend. One day he had an argument with one of our teachers, I can't remember which and left the mansion. Three months I walked around as if someone had tied one of my hands behind my back. You know what the first thing was that I did when he came back?'
'You kissed him?' Kathy guessed.
'First I punched him and then I kissed him.' Her grandfather confessed: 'I told him that I never wanted him to leave me like that.'
'But he did, didn't he?'
'Kind of. I hid my relationship with him, because back then I hadn't even told my parents that I was a mutant and I thought that being a mutant was freaky enough. And then Marie came to the mansion. She-'
'-was beautiful.' Finished Kathy for him: 'I've found the photos you have of her.'
'Yes, and I made one of the biggest mistakes in my life: I didn't broke up with John because I didn't want to lose him, but I spent more and more time with Marie. By the time Stryker and his men ambushed the mansion John had broken up with me and I didn't do anything.'
'Were you captured?' Kathy asked. She had heard of the Stryker incident in school.
'No, no, John, Marie, Logan and I escaped and fled to Boston, to my parents house, where I finally told them the truth. They didn't take it very good, my brother even called the cops on us. The rest of the X-Men team rescued us and we flew to rescue the other children.'
'So you were at Alkali Lake, too?'
'John left me there, he went with Magneto. He just walked out of the jet, right in front of me and I didn't even try to stop him.'
'And you've never seen him again?'
'No, I did. Unfortunately. I was a X-men and he was a member of the Brotherhood. We fought against each other on Alcatraz. I managed to knock him out and left him there. I don't know whether he escaped Phoenix' power wave or not.'
'Did you ever try to find him?'
'I didn't feel like I had the right to do that. There was no apology for what I've done. And after I met your grandmother I thought less and less about him over the years, although some part of me still hoped that he would come back.'
'That's why you painted him.'
'I like to think so. John was a very important person to me in every possible way.' He stretched his limbs.
'Please, Kathy, help inside, would you?' As she helped she said:
'It sounds like a tale.'
'I believe that your first love is always some kind of tale and most times it's both beautiful and tragic, but you never forget it.'
Kathy remembered Charlie with her long, golden hair streaming down her back and her lake-green eyes and black lashes. She remembered how Charlie put her head in the neck when she laughed, and nodded.
Bobby woke up, opened his eyes, saw that the bed was empty and frowned. This was unusual. The room was still dark, only the slightest light came from the grey and green line at the horizon. There was also no light seeping out from under the bathroom door. Bobby frowned harder. It wasn't like John to leave in the early morning. Come to bed in the early morning, yes, but for two years of sharing a room with John, he had never seen the other rise early. A dull fear began to spread in Bobby's chest. What if John had left him?
Bobby rolled around and was relived to see a dark shape against the grey light that fell through the window. John sat on the windowsill, with his legs drawn to his chest and rested his chin on his knees.
Bobby swung his legs out of the bed and walked over to John. When he was close enough he could see that the muscles of John's neck were tense, the only acknowledgement he made to Bobby's presence. Bobby knew that it was a privilege to be that close behind John, because he couldn't stand people being close behind him, Bobby had never asked why.
When he slid his arms around John's waist, he could feel the other relax against him and then John leaned his head against Bobby's shoulder. The soft, dim light shadowed John's face and his eyes seemed to be dark hollows. Bobby shuddered slightly and pressed a kiss to John's forehead. Here, in the privacy of their room, between night and day he was not afraid, here he allowed himself to touch John as much as he wanted to. He always wanted to touch John, always wanted to kiss him, always wanted to hold him close.
John loosened himself from Booby's embrace, turned around on the windowsill and then drew Bobby close again. Now, Bobby couldn't see John's face at all, but he could imagine, could imagine the intensive look John's eyes had on him, the painful vulnerability in them.
He put one hand around the back of John's neck, while his other caressed John's cheek and leaned his forehead against John's.
He wanted this, he wanted John. Forever.
Kathy heard a car when she came down for breakfast the next morning. Curious, she stepped outside onto the porch. Maura just climbed out of the car and smiled in a shy, absolutely un-Maura-way at her. Again, Kathy remembered Charlie with her fair hair and green eyes and shook her head, before she walked over to Maura and kissed her.
2 years later
Everything Burns of Robert Drake's latest exhibition was getting a bid of allegedly 135 million dollar, but Drake refused to sell it. The portrait of an unknown young man is critically claimed to be Drake's masterpiece and central element of the 'Elements of the past' exhibition which is to be said the last one because of Drake's progressing illness.
Kathy switched the television off when she heard the garden gate open. It had been noisy for as long as she could remember and her mother claimed that it already had been when they moved in.
Her grandfather was ill, well, he had been for a while now, but during the last months it had become worse. Kathy had agreed to stay here because she had no engagement at the moment, but her whole family, all aunts and uncles and cousins, and every friend were ready to fly over if she called. They were such a close knit circle and yet she couldn't help but wonder if her grandfather didn't have anyone else, a brother or a sister maybe but not even his parents had ever been mentioned.
She went to the kitchen window to see who had come. It was a man she didn't recognize, an old man with white hair and dark eyes and black clothes like a movie villain.
She opened the door for him:
'Yes?'
He looked at her not surprised but curious:
'This is Bobby Drake's house, right?'
'Yes, I'm his granddaughter. And you are?'
'I'm John Allerdyce.' It sounded haughty Kathy thought, as if she was expected to know instantly who he was.
'He is very ill I'm not sure –' She began but the man interrupted her:
'I'm sure he wants to see me. Just tell me where he is.' The smirk on his face gave him a mischievous, devilish expression and Kathy felt reminded of the boy her grandfather had painted during his last exhibition, the boy from the photo she had found for him.
She thought of asking this John Allerdyce if he was the boy from the painting but then didn't. She could always ask her grandfather later.
'Through this door, the first room on the right.' She told him. After his illness had worsened her grandfather had moved into his atelier so that he could paint until the last minute.
'Even if I'm going to haunt this house should I be not able to finish whatever it is that I'm working on when I'm dying.' As he had put it.
'Thank you.'
Kathy shifted into a more comfortable position in her seat on the porch. The atelier's windows opened to this side and thus she would be able to hear everything. It wasn't eavesdropping, not really.
'Yes?' She heard paper rustling and pictured her grandfather in bed with a sketchbook on his legs, looking up to the doorway from his latest drawing.
'Long time not seen, Ice-cube. You look horrible.' The laughter was evident in the man's voice. SOmthing small fell to the floor, a pen maybe?
'John?' Her grandfather was totally stunned with a bit of disbelief in the mix.
'The one and only. Did you really think I would not come when every newspaper on this planet showed my 16 year-old face plus a heartbreaking story about your illness?'
'I thought you were dead!'
'I was.' John said solemnly: 'For a very long time. On Alcatraz I came very close to dying and death leaves a mark. It kills you even if you don't die. Also I kinda had to forgive you first.' He laughed again.
'I'm glad it only took you sixty years. Otherwise we would have missed each other.'
'How long?' John, because Kathy found it ridiculous to refer to him as 'the man' anymore even in her own head, asked bluntly.
'A few weeks, maybe.' She could hear the shrug without seeing it.
'I must say I always pictured you in one of those hypermodern houses with lots of steel and glass and white walls.' John said after a pause.
'You always said that I was old-fashioned.'
'Yes, but I also said that you did everything to hide it.'
'I'm not hiding anymore.'
Another lull.
'Why did you never look for me?' John's voice was a mix of emotions Kathy couldn't discern. Anguish, maybe and fear.
'I didn't think I deserved it. Not after what I've done.'
'So you let me walk away. Again.' Now she could hear the hurt distinct and painful in his voice, as if it clamped down his throat: 'I thought you forgot me, so I tried everything to forget you, too.'
'You were my first, did you really think I could forget you that easily?'
'Well,' Another pain-tinged laugh from John: 'You were pretty good at forgetting me as soon as Rogue walked through the doors of the mansion.'
They were silent for a moment, then Kathy's grandfather began to laugh:
'I can't believe that we're still fighting over this.'
'I'm just glad to hear that you didn't marry her.'
'How did you-'
'One minute google search your name and read your Wikipedia entry.' John answered before her grandfather could finish: 'There's even a photo. You led the perfect life including a wife, couple of kids and a house. Did you have a dog, too?'
'A cat, Macavity.'
'Shame.'
'What where you doing all that time, John? I always half expected to see you in the Brotherhood again.'
'I was here and there. Earth's bigger than most people believe in this time. I've probably led the exact opposite of the life you've had: always on the move, never staying in one place. I've seen things that even you couldn't imagine.' John's voice wavered: 'Sixty years is not nearly enough time. I was no one and I could go anywhere I wanted to go.'
'Do you have family?'
'There were a few people that were – important to me. I think I have even one or two kids running around in world history but I never knew them and I doubt that they know that I'm alive.' She could hear clothes rustling and steps, so she figured that John had sat down on her grandfather's bed.
'So Remy never wasted a word on me.'
'Remy LeBeau?' There was a short pause after the question in which John apparently nodded because her grandfather continued: 'No, he never said anything. Why?'
'We spent some years together in France. But he grew tired of being no one and the last thing I knew about him was that he had gone to the mansion.'
'Remy, he...he was the reason Rogue and I broke up.'
'Can't say I'm sorry to hear that.'
'What happened to them?'
'Rogue modelled for a brief time, until the Cure gave out. Remy pretty soon went back to New Orleans but they kept dating on and off for the better half of a decade. Then Rogue came back to the mansion and Remy vanished around the same time Logan did. Kitty and Piotr married. Theresa and Jamie did, too but it hit us all pretty hard when Theresa died in childbirth together with the child.'
'Wait, Jamie? As in Jamie Maddox?'
'Yes.'
'Who would have guessed,' John laughed.
'Angel,...Angel got killed, too, by Jubilee.'
'Jubes? Are you kidding me? What the hell happened here?'
'She joined the Brotherhood after her parents were murdered because they had a mutant daughter. It was a nasty time back then.'
'You're telling me.' John muttered.
'I love you.' Her grandfather said suddenly and John choked.
'This isn't one of your chick-flicks, Bobby.' Did Kathy imagine things or did he sound scared?: 'I'm not going to say that I love you, too and all that stuff.'
'But you do, don't you?' John sighed:
'That's what got us into this whole mess from the beginning on.'
'You always said: Everything's fair in love and war.'
'And look where that got us.'
'It's over!' John shouted: 'Out. Finished. You didn't ask me to stay, so I left. True love that won't be denied is a fairytale. But this is the real life, where you left me and I left you. Where I tried to kill you and you left me for dead after defeating me. And sixty years later I'm here and you are dying. We had our chance but somewhere we went wrong. No declaration of yours, no painting is going to give us a second chance.'
'No, you're right.' Her grandfather said defeated: 'Do I at least get a dying wish?'
'What do you want?'
'I know you don't believe in an afterlife-'
'Still don't.'
'-but if we're reborn then I want you to promise me that we'll find each other again.'
'A new life doesn't sound so bad.' John's voice softened.
'I'll do better, in the next life.' Her grandfather said fiercely.
'Yeah, me, too.' John answered: 'I'll see you there.'